Forum:What can be done to revive WoWWiki?
What happened to WoWWiki? I saw this in wiki-activity. What happened to WoWWiki that it needs to be revived? Your post doesn't makes this clear at all. Gallahan (talk) 01:07, December 11, 2010 (UTC) :In the hopes of preventing an overly-in depth response that may be uncivil, the "what" that happened was Wikia implementing a new skin that the community did not like, and therefore the majority of the community forked into a new site. Some mishandling of the fork by a former admin and new admin there, and the perceived lack of care to many from wikia, caused some bad blood between the two. Add to that that the new fork is now Blizzard's new fan site and WoWWiki went from Wikia's best property to a withering outdated mirror site. HooperBandP (talk) 01:17, December 11, 2010 (UTC) ::That's a good capsule summary. The fork that HopperBandP is talking about is Wowpedia and it has a distinct advantage over WoWWiki currently, even though alot of the content is the same. That advantage is described in Forum:WoWWiki's death blow%3F Blizzard tacitly endorses Wowpedia. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 5:24 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 :::Oh, I wonder why I didn't hear about this before. You're right, many articles on http://www.wowpedia.org/ are almost the same. But those that have changed with Cataclysm, you can tell which is being updated. I'll have to tell my friends - thanks for the heads up. Gallahan (talk) 01:55, December 11, 2010 (UTC) ::::Uh oh. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 11:23 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 :::::Sorry. I guess this wasn't what you were trying to get at originally. But I mean, compare pages yourself. Take care. Gallahan (talk) 19:03, December 11, 2010 (UTC) What can Wikia do to revive WoWWiki? These are my ideas, but feel free to add any others. * Make sure WoWWiki has at least 1 full-time bureaucrat dedicated to the site, even if it has to staff or a paid volunteer. Preferrably someone who plays WoW, of course. ** Full-time doesn't mean continuously, 8 hrs a day, just someone who can spend at least a couple hours every day, but is willing to interact, learn from other users, and teach other users. ** By interact I mean respond to questions on the forums, coordinate guidelines, policy, and tasks with the admins, and show leadership of issues. * Identify good admin candidates and promote them quickly. Don't cull them from other wikis, they will have split loyalties from the beginning. ** Incentives to keep them working on the wiki and being good ambassadors would help too. Maybe a one-on-one phone conversation with a Wikia staffer once a month or something. ** Good admins can quickly make a great wiki. * Restart or re-create the WoWWiki:Welcoming Committee. ** This doesn't take any special skills to do, just a friendly and helpful greeting with links to useful info to get started. ** The welcome bot is too obvious to most users as a canned message. Also, with few active admins, replies may not happen quickly. * Create a Cataclysm task force with people assigned to each large area of the game that needs updating. ** Wikia could sweeten the pot by giving team members a Wikia T-shirt to members who reach 1000 or maybe 2000 legit Cataclysm-related edits. A custom Wikia T-shirt would be even better. * Restore tooltip popup functionality. DONE * Direct Fanfic and RP folks to WoWRP. WoWWiki is not for them. ** WoWRP should receive some support to better integrate with WoWWiki. * Work on better ties with Blizzard. Wikia and Blizzard are both businesses that don't compete with each other, really, but they could have had some kind of relationship. ** Wikia must have some business development/marketing folks (at least one) whose job it is to foster these kind of relationships. ** This is not an easy thing, since Blizzard has been resistant in the past, but if you don't make the effort... This is my starting list. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 3:54 PM PST 6 Dec 2010 :Re : Restore Tooltip Functionality: They tried. They couldn't get it working and then gave up and deleted everything. Resa1983 (talk) 00:20, December 7, 2010 (UTC) ::Who is "they"? Pcj tried to make it work, but I think he just wanted it to work his way. When Wikia didn't cooperate, he just stopped working on it and deleted the code. Since I'm not an admin, I can't undelete it or look at the code, but I've looked at it before and I'm sure a capable JS-savvy person could either get it to work again or write some new code with it as a basis. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 5:46 PM PST 6 Dec 2010 :::At the heart of it, tooltips, flyouts, etc. rely on basic CSS and JS to program. Other technologies can make it easier, but CSS and JS will get the job done. On the flip side, in Pcj's defence, he is not by any means obliged to help Wikia solve the tooltip problem. They chose to destroy the skin that it was previously designed for. They are the ones who profit from it. Admin or not, we all boil down to voluntary contributers who cannot be compelled to do anything for anyone. ddcorkum (talk) 02:11, December 7, 2010 (UTC) ::::"They" being Wikia staff (Uberfuzzy) tried getting it to work, then gave up and deleted all but 1 of the attempts http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Wikia.js&oldid=2408314. Unfortunately of course since he deleted the other attempts they don't show up in his Contributions list, I just remember being online at that point and seeing his attempts in RC, and his subsequent deletions. He spent at most 10 minutes attempting to get it to work before giving up, and deleting everything. Wikia didn't make a real attempt into fixing it. If its not a quick fix, they don't give a damn. Resa1983 (talk) 02:17, December 7, 2010 (UTC) :I second the tooltip point, Fandyllic. I'm doing a lot of stuff on recipe table templates in Wowpedia, building on the work I had done on Alchemy here. The leading reason for doing it there instead of here is that elimination of Ajax and tooltip functionality has completely crippled recipe lists. All things aside, this is probably one of the most damaging things Wikia did with the new forced skin. It matters as much as the fixed-width design (for WoWWiki at least, not so much for other Wikia wikis), because tooltips are a very natural part of the World of Warcraft experience/environment. The WoW community expects tooltips to work, and WoWWiki will not be taken seriously without it. I hope for Wikia's sake they recognize this not as whining but as constructive critisism for their benefit. I also hope they realize soon, because the "rely on google" strategy will only work for 4 more hours. People googling Cataclysm topics will find Wowpedia near the top of the search far more frequently than WoWWiki. That loss of market share, if left unchecked, will be irriversible. ddcorkum (talk) 02:07, December 7, 2010 (UTC) ::Who cares what happens to WoWWiki? Wikia is a host, nothing more - the community has moved on. Why give a flip how well they do with it? Wowpedia is perfectly fine. (geez, submitting this reminds me how horrible their servers are)-- 02:22, December 7, 2010 (UTC) ::While I don't neccesarily agree with Pcj, I would like to pose the question of 'What's keeping those of you who are still here, here?'. Clearly Wikia's interests are purely financial, and as far as they're concerned WoWWiki is theirs so of course they're going to keep hosting it. But with Wowpedia being an exact copy of WoWWiki as of Nov 18th, run by the same people who ran WoWWiki, and Blizzard clearly endorsing it over WoWWiki what is actually keeping the users here? -- Stewart 02:58, December 7, 2010 (UTC) :::Users not knowing about the move because Wikia's taken down the notices and aren't letting us tell people. Resa1983 (talk) 12:23, December 7, 2010 (UTC) ::::Which is precisely what I'm still the most worried about, even nearly 2 months on. I hate leaving editors and readers, unaware of the fork, behind. --Kaydeethree (talk) 23:34, December 10, 2010 (UTC) JoePlay's feedback on list of suggestions :Copied from RE:_WoWWiki_plans on User talk:Fandyllic. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 3:11 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 Hi Fandyllic. First, let me apologize for this late reply. As manager of the Wikia Gaming category, I always have multiple things going on at once everyday, and I say that just to express that I have not been ignoring you, but I should have replied sooner. Now, on to WoWWiki discussion... I saw that impressive list of suggestions you posted in the forum, so I would like to respond to those. :Make sure WoWWiki has at least 1 full-time bureaucrat dedicated to the site, even if it has to staff or a paid volunteer. Preferrably someone who plays WoW, of course. This is exactly why we hired Raylan13, an active WoW player, to focus only on WoWWiki, primarily on the addition, organization and maintenance of Cataclysm articles. :Identify good admin candidates and promote them quickly. Don't cull them from other wikis, they will have split loyalties from the beginning. The act of us (Wikia) promoting good admin candidates on wikis that have no active admins is something we've done many times, but with the sensitive situation at WoWWiki, we want to be as hands-off as possible in this area. With so many people putting every action and every letter of every word made by anyone associated with Wikia under the most scrutinizing of microscopes, if we were to promote good editors to admins (who are interested in becoming one), there is a good chance that the anti-Wikia people would accuse us of hand picking who we want. Now that you (a long-time member of the community) have realized that you were still a bureaucrat, I am hopeful that you will decide (if you haven't already) to help rebuild the team of admins, as well as the rest of the WoWWiki community. Of all the people currently contributing to the wiki, you are surely more familiar with the policies, guidelines and ins and outs of WoWWiki better than anyone. :Restart or re-create the WoWWiki:Welcoming Committee. This would be a great team to have, made up of active members of the community of course. I see that has been inactive for about 13 months and that you were the leader. Do you have any insights on how to restart this team, considering it became inactive while WoWWiki's community was thriving? :Create a Cataclysm task force with people assigned to each large area of the game that needs updating. Again, this is why Raylan13 was hired. Obviously, having a volunteer "task force" dedicated to Cataclysm articles would be ideal. The idea of giving out t-shirts (that say WoWWiki instead of Wikia) is something I have planned as part of another giveaway, but I agree that it would be a good idea for this purpose. :Restore tooltip popup functionality. Because it is an important feature to WoW players, I will definitely look into getting this restored if it's possible. :Direct Fanfic and RP folks to WoWRP. How was this handled in the past that is not being done now? Was it admins leaving a message on someone's talk page who had made a fanfic or RP edit? Until the wiki has a team of active admins, I think drawing attention to WoWRP could be done on places like the welcome message, Community Corner, WoWWiki about page, etc. :Work on better ties with Blizzard. We have a good relationship with Blizzard and will continue to work with them in any way we can. I plan to contact them about sponsoring a contest/giveaway as well. Again, sorry for the late reply and the fact that I can't go into any more detail than I have. I do hope that you decide to help the remaining WoWWiki community leave recent events in the past and work toward a positive future. JoePlay (talk) 21:52, December 10, 2010 (UTC) What Wikia is doing (or not doing) to revive WoWWiki, so far (Dec 2010) This list is largely based on a combination of JoePlay's comments above and various conversations with Raylan13. * Raylan13 is Wikia's point person for Wikia. He's not just some random staffer who wanders over to WoWWiki to do some stuff. ** To me, this means if you have an issue with how Wikia is handling WoWWiki or you would like to see a change that only Wikia can accommodate, contact Raylan13 or use . ** Since Raylan13 is also supposed to be responsible for addition, organization and maintenance of Cataclysm articles, after following WoWWiki:Policies, you should go to him for guidance. Remember, he's somewhat new to WoWWiki also, so if you think he's doing it the wrong way, tell him. * Wikia is NOT actively trying to rebuild the admin group of WoWWiki. ** I may try to do this, but I haven't yet fully committed (Wikia's feedback and cooperation needs a little more evaluation). ** If you think you could be a good admin or think another user would be a good admin, go to WoWWiki:Requests for adminship. ** The admin approval process is in flux, but if a good candidate appears, their promotion will happen quickly. * Wikia is NOT actively looking at trying to restore tooltip functionality. * Wikia is NOT directing people interested in posting fanfic and RP stuff to WoWRP? ** Wikia seems to be waiting for a new set of active admins to do this. ** My recommendation is to eventually move all fanfic and RP to WoWRP, but it can wait. * Wikia supposedly has a good relationship with Blizzard Entertainment. ** See the tag I put at the end there? That's my way of saying I don't believe it until some evidence is presented. ** From my observation and the facts on the ground, Wowpedia has a much better relationship with Blizzard than Wikia or WoWWiki. So I guess we can't count on Blizzard for any kind of boost, especially over Wowpedia. * Censorship. Wikia is threatening users with bans if they mention WoWWiki's competitors. ** I list this as something Wikia is doing to revive WoWWiki, but I think most of us agree it is a poor tool. * WoWWiki has gotten some special treatment compared to other Wikis wikis. ** WoWWiki got wider fixed width format before most any other wikis. * WoWWiki has gotten some specific contests that are not shared with other wikis. Did I miss anything? Is this enough? -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 3:35 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 :It remains to be seen whether there is enough of a participatory community to be able to do process like this, especially electing admins. From what I can tell, most of the people that are aware of, and post on, the forums, moved to Wowpedia. -- 23:40, December 10, 2010 (UTC) ::Wowwiki needs admins/helpers who will actually bother to read the policies for the wiki. Kris said he was going to after I corrected him on an inappropriate ban on his first day, but Raylan's been here for several days and still hasn't bothered to read the policies already in place. He stated they were difficult to find, yet theres links in several places if you bother to look. Add to that his implementation of a new policy without the community's thoughts/support/approval and actually kind of goes AGAINST the Elinks policy currently in place, and it just reeks of Wikia interference. Resa1983 (talk) 00:04, December 11, 2010 (UTC) :::Yup, I agree with both what Pcj said and Resa1983. Wikia needs to change their ways to attract contributors, not drive them away. So far I haven't seen much action on that front, althought Wikia is starting to give back more control to admins on some new features (after being beaten on the head for a few months). :::I've talked to Raylan13 about reading the existing policies. To be honest, Deadlykris looks like a short timer to me (no offense Kris). -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 5:06 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 Update:Tooltips are back. Please can you let me know if they still don't work for you (you may need to purge your cache first)-- Sannse (help forum | blog) 01:15, December 15, 2010 (UTC) :Woot! They are indeed back! I looked at what JoePlay did and I'm surprised it was that easy. A very good step in the right direction. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 10:20 PM PST 14 Dec 2010 More ideas to help revive WoWWiki Fire away. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 3:35 PM PST 10 Dec 2010 * Speed up WoWWiki. *:WoWWiki is definitely slower than Wowpedia. Sometimes WoWWiki becomes nearly unusable. I'm not sure if this is a general Wikia problem or something specific to WoWWiki. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 4:37 PM PST 12 Dec 2010 * Stop making changes to underlying Wikia shared wiki functionality or UI without some kind of notice to the admins and adequate documentation. *:I don't want to make the long list of things Wikia has done in the last few months without adequately notifying the admins of large wikis and not providing worthwhile documentation or help. -- Fandyllic (talk · ) 1:08 PM PST 13 Dec 2010